


What Dreams May Come

by penguinspy42



Series: Dreams of Death [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-24
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 10:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penguinspy42/pseuds/penguinspy42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he touched the blue wood, the reaction was immediate, intense, and painful. It was like he not only looked into the Untempered Schism but was forcibly pushed into it with no option to run. Time was sundered from his soul leaving him nothing but an empty shell with no past, present, or future and that's when he knew.</p><p>It was his TARDIS. And she was dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Dreams May Come

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Hamlet, fic inspired by very vivid dreams.

All the Doctor wanted to do was run but he couldn't. In the darkness he was blind, but more than that, his feet were rooted to the ground. He tried to call out but nothing happened. That's when he noticed the silence. It was an unnatural suffocating silence that seemed to even mute his breath. Or was he breathing at all? He couldn't really tell. Experimentally, he tried to snap his fingers. He felt nothing, and heard nothing, but the effect was instant; a spotlight flashed on focused on the TARDIS lying prone in a circle of white light.

With a blink, or possibly just a flash of the light, the TARDIS moved closer. Or maybe he moved forward. Physical sensations seemed out of his grasp at the moment so he wasn't sure which it was. Blink after blink, flash after flash, the distance between the blue box and himself diminished until it stopped within arm's reach. After only a beat, the doors dropped open. Leaning forward to peer inside, he saw the dead body of an unfamiliar man.

Shaken by the sight, he automatically tried to move away but found himself still frozen to the spot. Being unable to flee, his mind scrambled, trying to come up with an answer, an escape, anything. Maybe it wasn't his TARDIS, he suddenly realized, and the thought calmed him. After all, it wasn't bigger on the inside. It just seemed to be a normal police box that happened to look a lot like his. Plus there was the matter of the mysterious corpse inside.

He needed to know for sure, though, so he reached forward timidly. Though he saw no visible hand, he knew when he touched the blue wood because the reaction was immediate, intense, and painful. It was like he not only looked into the Untempered Schism but was forcibly pushed into it with no option to run. Time was sundered from his soul leaving him nothing but an empty shell with no past, present, or future and that's when he knew.

It _was_ his TARDIS. And she was dead.

He broke. Suddenly, he was incorporeal yet solid; burning yet lacking the substance to turn to ash. He was running, but he still couldn't move from the spot. He cursed whatever locked him there, so close to his beloved box devoid of all energy and life; his one constant in his too many years of life. As he struggled with his invisible bonds and fractured mind, a single voice told him that the man within the box was her murder.

As the words formed in his head, the corpse began to decompose. No, not decompose—change.  Its nose, hair, eyes, entire facial structure were shrinking someone new. It happened again and again through men and women, large noses, small ears, blonde, ginger, violet hair. He was just wondering what sort of shapeshifting alien it could be when its features flashed through a familiar large chin and floppy brown hair.

It was like looking into some macabre mirror and he no longer had the will to struggle. All he could do was gape in shock. It counted down from there—ten, nine, eight, all the way to one. His first form, perhaps the oldest looking of them all, started to properly decompose, but in extreme fast forward. The eyes melted into empty sockets, the skin turned leathery then rotted away, and the bones turned to dust in a single breath.

Before the powder could properly settle, an unseen wind displaced the small pile, first in gentle waves that quickly grew into an overwhelming cyclone. It moved from the box toward the Doctor, enveloping him in the swirling cloak of ash. Through the howling wind came a hissing voice, barely a whisper yet he could make out every razor sharp word.

"This was you. All of this. You murdered time. You brought about the end of all things. And there is absolutely nothing you can do to fix it, _DOC-TOR!_ "

The mocking tone applied to his name turned into a blood-curdling shriek that echoed from all around him as well as within. Physical sensations came crashing down on him as he bolted upright in bed, hearts pounding in his chest and air struggling to fill lungs that felt as if they had shrunk.

He turned automatically to seek comfort from the one woman who would understand; River Song. The woman who gave up everything for him, stopped time for him, and enjoyed a bond with the TARDIS that even he would never know. But the bed was empty. He shouldn't be surprised, he supposed. He didn't deserve the level of love and trust that she provided him. He seemed to have memories of their bodies entwined just the night before, but perhaps that had been another dream.

Falling backward, he tugged the blankets as tightly as he could around himself and angrily fought unwelcome emotions when he heard the door quietly open and shut. He shifted slightly and saw River tiptoeing in with a steaming mug of tea in her hands.

When she saw his eyes open, she whispered, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake—" But then concern fell across her face. "Oh sweetie, what's wrong? Did you have the dream again?"

Not certain he had regained his voice, he simply nodded.

River placed her mug on the bedside table and sat next to him in bed. She nudged his head into her lap and gently raked her fingers through his hair as she quietly hummed an old Gallifreyan lullaby. The melody and her touch warmed his muscles and melted the chill of death away.

"There's always a way out," River whispered as she leaned down and pressed a kiss against his shoulder. "Isn't that what you always tell me?"

"Yes, but what if—"

"We've been to the end of the universe three times in just the last week and each one was different. It's not a fixed point."

"But that means it _could_ happen," he insisted miserably.

"No, it really won't. Not if you don't let it." She shifted his head off her lap and slid down next to him, wrapping her arms around him and settling his head on her shoulder. "You mustn't travel alone. That's what draws the shadow from your heart and allows them to consume you. Doctor, we both know I can't always be with you, but you must promise that you won't lock yourself away."

"I—I'll try."

She gave a long-suffering sigh that indicated she knew that's the best she was going to get. In return, he hugged her close, hoping beyond hope that if he held on, she wouldn't ever leave. He was deluding himself, he knew, but he needed to believe that the library was a figment of his imagination and she would be crashing into his life randomly forever more. It was that thought and her arms around him that acted as a security blanket, easing him back into a slumber where dreams of the two of them would wash away the remaining traces of the nightmare before.


End file.
